Cryptozoology and Science: What is Cryptozoology?

In my last post I argued that cryptozoology (specifically, some kinds of Bigfoot research) does not meet the standard criteria for pseudoscience, but that it still falls short of the standards of good science.  This leads to two questions.

1. What is meant by cryptozoology?
2. What is different between it and good science?

In this post I will try to clarify what at least I mean by cryptozoology.  I'll save the second question for later.

Cryptozoology may be defined to be the search for animals reported by witnesses or recounted in legend but either not recognized by science or believed to be extinct.  Such animals are called cryptids, so cryptozoology is the search for cryptids.


These definitions, though, are so broad that they cover very different cases which should be distinguished; each of the following have been called cryptids by some people.

1. An animal known to currently exist, but not in the location where it was seen.  The sightings of big cats in Britain fall into this category.
2. An animal which is known to have existed and is believed to have gone extinct during human history, but for which there are unconfirmed sightings after its presumed extinction.  Alleged sightings of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker and of the Tasmanian Wolf fall into this category.
3. An animal which is known to have existed and is believed to have gone extinct before the dawn of human history, but for which there are unconfirmed sightings.  Alleged sightings of dinosaurs and pterosaurs fit this category.
4. An animal which is not known to have ever existed, but which is biologically possible and for which there are unconfirmed sightings.  Alleged sightings of Bigfoot go here, since Bigfoot seems to be either an ape that has independently evolved a preference for bipedalism or a relative that diverged from us at or about the time of the Australopithecines. 
5. A creature which appears to be biologically and/or physically impossible.  Mermaids, which make no sense biologically, and werewolves, which appear to violate the laws of physics, go here. 

Category 1 is really pretty boring.  There is a long, sad history of people bringing exotic pets or specimens into an area outside that animal's normal range and releasing it, usually with disastrous consequences for the pet, sometimes with disastrous consequences for the local environment.

Category 5, on the other hand, belongs in the category of the paranormal, if not in the category of pure fiction.  As with Category 1, many self-professed cryptozoologists do not consider these to be truly a part of cryptozoology.

Category 2, on the other hand, is dubious.  Even the most skeptical are not surprised that sometimes announcements of extinction are premature, though some survivals would be more surprising than others.  It seems much more likely, for example, that the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker is still in existence than that the Dodo still survives.

That leaves Category 3 and 4 as the solid core of what is meant by cryptozoology, with Category 2 on the edge and Categories 1 and 5 outside the boundaries.  The upshot, then, is that cryptozoology is the search for animals which are not impossible but for which only weak evidence exists.

Bigfoot Research: Pseudoscience, Pathological Science, or Something Else?

Rather than looking at cryptozoology as a whole, let's take a look at what is probably its most familiar example:  Bigfoot research.  Based on my previous post, does it meet the standards of either pseudoscience or pathological science?



It's pretty clear that it cannot be pathological science.  In particular, Langmuir's talk went a long way towards defining pathological science lists 6 symptoms:  

1. "The maximum effect that is observed is produced by a causative agent of barely detectable intensity, and the magnitude of the effect is substantially independent of the intensity of the cause.
   
2. "The effect is of a magnitude that remains close to the limit of detectability; or, many measurements are necessary because of the very low statistical significance of the results.
   
3. "Claims of great accuracy.
   
4. "Fantastic theories contrary to experience.
   
5. "Criticisms are met by ad hoc excuses thought up on the spur of the moment.
   
6. "Ratio of supporters to critics rises up to somewhere near 50% and then falls gradually to oblivion."

Symptoms 4 and 5 may fit some Bigfoot research, but the rest do not fit at all.

But what about pseudoscience?  For that, we can look at the list of "defining characteristics" from What Science Is And How It Works, by Gregory N. Derry:

1. Static or Randomly Changing Ideas
2. Vague Mechanisms to Acquire Understanding
3. Loosely Connected Thoughts
4. Lack of Organized Skepticism
5. Disregard for Established Results 

The problem with trying to apply this list to Bigfoot research as a whole turns out to be ... that it's not at all clear there is such a thing as Bigfoot research as a whole.

So, for instance, it is possible to find websites that claim that Bigfoot are some kind of space alien, or that they are some sort of interdimensional beings, or whatnot.  Those are pretty much a home run for pseudoscience and require little further comment. On the other hand, there are more moderate claims that bear more scrutiny.

What about the idea, popularized through shows like MonsterQuest, that some sort of large, bipedal ape migrated across the Bering land bridge and established a small but persistent population in the Americas?  Let's go through the "defining characteristics" of pseudoscience one by one. 

1. Does this kind of Bigfoot research exhibit static or randomly changing ideas?  Not so much, in my opinion.  The ideas have not changed much since the 1970's, but that's due to the one overwhelming problem -- not enough evidence.  Still, those who subscribe to the ape theory of Bigfoot tend to keep tabs on developments such as the discovery of fossils of the Flores "hobbit" and archaeological studies piecing together the arrival and spread of man in North America, and they use these developments to tweak their own theories.
2. Are the methods used to acquire understanding vague?  Again, not really.  Most adherents of the ape theory really want hard scientific data; many of them actively look for hair samples, feces, or footprints, set up trailcam traps in hopes of a photo, etc.  There's nothing wrong with that from a scientific point of view.

That's not to say that some of the analysis doesn't strike me as rather far-fetched -- for example, attempts to see details in the Patterson-Gimlin film that seem to be too near the limit of the image's resolution.  There also seems to be some cherry-picking with data, among other procedural issues.  These are problems, but they still don't amount to "defining characteristic #2".
3. Are the thoughts loosely connected?  This may be more of a real problem.  Elaborate theories abound, but the connection to solid evidence and/or mainstream scientific literature tends to be tenuous at best.  Again, the real problem is that there is very little concrete evidence to begin with. 
4. Is there a lack of organized skepticism?  Yes, because there is a lack of organization.  Anyone who occasionally reads Cryptomundo will know that there are plenty of people in the cryptozoological community who are quick to pounce on a hoax or point out possible misidentifications.  Since cryptozoology has few if any peer-reviewed journals, though, it really does lack the kind of safeguard enjoyed by established sciences.
   
   A more serious problem along these lines is the emotional attachment to both their data and interpretations. Cryptozoologists may be willing to criticize each other's work, but they too often fail to exhibit the cautious approach that comes with self-criticism, and they too often lose their tempers when criticized by others. This is a very normal and human behavior, but there is no formal structure to hold it in check. Cryptozoology suffers because of it.
5. How about disregard for established results?  I think this is less of a problem than might be expected.  It's nearly impossible to prove a negative, so the non-existence of Bigfoot is not really an established result.  Unlike the interdimensional Bigfoot theories or the space alien Bigfoot theories, the Bigfoot-as-an-ape theory does not require violating the laws of physics, nor does it necessarily require violating the established results of biology.  Creatures that may have looked very much like smaller versions of Bigfoot once existed in Africa, but there is no evidence that they moved out of Africa before going extinct. And yes, Gigantopithecus was a large ape living in east Asia not more than 1 million years ago, but it probably was not bipedal, since
1. there is no evidence about how it walked, 
2. walking on two legs the way we humans do is a complicated stunt that seems unlikely to have evolved multiple times, and
3. Gigantopithecus does not appear to have been closely related to humans.

How about the characteristics mentioned in my earlier post?  I think it is a fair assessment that the more theoretical a study of Bigfoot is, the more likely it is to exhibit all the characteristics of pseudoscience.  I also think that many people accept Bigfoot as a physical reality not due to the evidence, but because they really want it to be true.  A world with a Bigfoot in it would just be way cooler than a world with no Bigfoot.  Also, it does display the warning signs of a nearly constant minority of adherents while being rejected by the preponderance of professional biologists.

On the whole, then, I would say that some Bigfoot research is clearly pseudoscience, but that the best of it, though usually falling short of the standards I would expect for good science, is at least not pseudoscience.

By the way, please note that whether something is pseudoscience or not depends entirely on its structure and methodology, not whether its conclusions are right or wrong.  Personally, my guess is that there is about a 1% chance that there is some sort of American ape that is responsible for the Bigfoot sightings.  On the plus side, this does not appear to be physically or biologically impossible, and there are a lot of sightings.  On the minus side, the sightings data are not consistent enough to be sure they represent anything real, there is the lack of convincing concrete evidence, and yarns about a creature halfway between man and the animals are so compelling to any storyteller that I would expect similar tales to be told all over the world -- and they are -- regardless of whether any real animal lies at the heart of these stories.

Pseudoscience vs. Pathological Science

A comment asking about pathological science was left on my post about cryptozoology, so it's probably worth contrasting the two kinds of "science gone wrong".

• Pathological science is basically being led astray by wishful thinking and excitement while making observations at the very limits of perception.
• Pseudoscience is basically holding beliefs that are not subject to observation or experiment but still claiming they are scientific facts or theories.
• Pathological science is usually experimental in nature. 
• Most pseudoscientists call themselves theorists.
• People involved in pathological science tend to have the degrees and backgrounds that would prepare them for real science.
• Pseudoscientists are more often self-educated or amateurs. 
• Because of the background and experience of the person who generates pathological science, his idea is often widely accepted among the scientific community at first.  However, as time goes on others find it difficult or impossible to replicate the initial successes; this becomes much more noticeable as experimental equipment improves.  As a result, support for the idea diminishes to practically zero. 
• Pseudoscience is less likely to become popular in the scientific community.  Because it does not depend on observation or experiment for validation, it tends to persist at a more-or-less constant, low level of support from the general public. 

A few important things must be pointed out.

• Real science may give wrong results through honest mistakes or bad luck.  Pathological science or pseudoscience may be factually correct through dumb luck.  The real difference between them is that real science has a methodology that can be trusted to generally yield good answers and to eventually correct itself when it is wrong. 
• A hypothesis can come from anywhere and still yield good science -- as long as it is subject to being tested by observation or experiment.  A good example is Heinrich Schliemann's discovery of Troy from geographic clues in Homer's Iliad.
• The scientific community can get caught up in pseudoscience, too, because scientists are also people.  A notable example is the rise of "Aryan physics" in the Third Reich, which involved some really big names in physics, and some Soviet science was likewise distorted by politics.

Cryptozoology

I run across cryptozoology on a regular basis, mostly because I have an interest in provocative ideas, but also because I have an interest in the boundary between "healthy" science and its unhealthy relatives:  namely pseudoscience and pathological science, to say nothing of outright hoaxes.  Exactly where cryptozoology falls in this range is difficult to say, in no small part because different people mean somewhat different things by the word "cryptozoology", but I think it's a fair assertion that much of what is called cryptozoology is contaminated to a greater or lesser extent with pseudoscience.

Right now I don't have time to go into this in any real detail, but if this interests you at all, please take a look at this recent post at the Tet Zoo.  I will return to the subject later.

Monkey Head Monster

One of my guilty pleasures is the "Your True Tales" set of posts to paranormal.about.com near the beginning of each month.  For the most part, I'd say that these are neither true nor tales -- they're the first real attempt at fiction by a teenager (typically) who has read a few dozen of these stories and thought to himself or herself, "I can write a story as good as that."  Sadly, they are correct.

I have to make an exception for the story "Monkey Head Monster" (preserved here) from April 2007, though. That story is a work of art, almost of poetry: a truly beautiful satire of a genre that screams out for satire.

Why Does One Side of the Moon Always Face the Earth?

One odd aspect of the moon is the fact that the same side always faces the earth. (Well, pretty nearly; it does seem to rock back and forth a little from the perspective of the earth, a process called libration. This small effect would be very hard to notice without a telescope, though.) Why is this?

The question of how this came to be is not really in question. The moon is slowly moving away from the earth, as confirmed by laser pulses sent to retroreflectors left on the moon by Apollo astronauts. Eons ago, then, the moon must have been much closer, and the mass of the earth would have generated huge tides on the moon that gradually synchronized the moons rotation with its orbit.

That only answers how it happened, though, not why it happened. There only appear to be three legitimate answers to that question:

1. A large moon near the earth is somehow responsible for earth being the kind of place where intelligent life could live.  Venus, which is nearly earth's twin, has no moon, and it also lacks both a magnetic field and plate tectonics, both of which are needed for life as we know it to exist over the long term.  Maybe the tidal force of the moon  helped keep the earth stirred up enough for a magnetic field and plate tectonics.  Maybe, but probably not; the absence of a magnetic field on Venus is probably due to its slow rotation, and its absence of plate tectonics is probably due to the fact that it has no water to help "lubricate" the rocks.  (This really happens, but not the way it sounds.  Rocks with water chemically bound in them behave differently than rocks with no water.)
   Or maybe the moon in some way protected us from asteroid impacts by acting as a shield.  Maybe, but probably not; the moon's gravity helps pull asteroids towards earth, and the center of gravity of the earth-moon system (to which asteroids would be attracted) is actually about a thousand miles beneath the surface of the earth. 


2. Maybe there is no particular reason for it.  If there were no moon, we would be asking why there was no moon; if the moon rotated at a different speed, we would be asking why that happened.  Even if all these things are equally possible, only one of them can happen. 


3. Maybe God arranged this for a reason, to teach us some kind of lesson.  This is the idea I favor.

Consider the song Abendlied by Matthias Claudius, specifically the two verses

Seht ihr den Mond dort stehen?

Er ist nur halb zu sehen

und ist doch rund und schön.

So sind wohl manche Sachen,

die wir getrost belachen,

weil uns're Augen sie nicht seh'n.

Wir stolze Menschenkinder

sind eitel arme Sünder

und wissen gar nicht viel.

Wir spinnen Luftgespinste

und suchen viele Künste

und kommen weiter von dem Ziel.

These can be translated

Do you see the moon up there?

You can only see half of it,

all the same, it is round and beautiful.

The same goes for many things

that we laugh at without hesitation,

just because our eyes don't see them.

We proud children of man

are vain poor sinners

who do not know much at all.

We spin gossamers of air

and search for many skills

and further depart from our goal.

That, I think, is the best explanation we will get as to why the moon always shows us one face.

Thermodynamics of Ghost Hunting

For about a decade there has been a TV show about two plumbers who try to “scientifically” detect and communicate with ghosts. There are all kinds of problems with this, but let's just confine ourselves to one aspect that relates to physics. One sign of ghostly activity they look for is a localized “cold spot.” The plumbers frequently explain this as follows: “The theory is that spirits drain heat energy from the environment and use it for manifestations.” (The “manifestations” include the sudden collapse of unstable piles and the sort of faint knocking noises houses make as they cool overnight.) How much energy are we talking about? Let's assume that the cold spot is the exact size and shape that the body of the haunting ghost had in life, which may have had a mass of 75 kg. The density of the human body is close to that of water, so each kilogram of mass corresponds to one liter of volume. The volume of the cold spot is then 75 L, or 75000 cm^3.

In a typical investigation, the ambient indoor temperature might be 65 degrees (291.483 K), and the cold spot might be as low as 60 degrees (288.706 K). The temperature drop in this case is 5 degrees or 2.777 K. According to Wikipedia, the volumetric heat capacity of air under typical room conditions is 0.000121 J / (cm^3 K). This means the total energy extracted from the cold spot is 25.2 J, enough energy to lift a 1 kg (2.2 lb) mass 2.57 m (8' 5”). The plumbers have never seen anything like this.

A major problem with their “theory” is that a ghost would be constrained by the First Law of Thermodynamics (conservation of energy) but not by the Second Law of Thermodynamics (which implies you cannot just convert ambient heat energy into useful energy the way they imply). Maybe, though, the ghost is making use of a temperature difference – say, the temperature difference between the room and its grave, which we take to be 48.5 degrees (282.317 K, the average temperature of Akron Caves in NY). If there were some way to make a thermal connection between the two, the flow of heat could be used to do useful work; that is how steam engines and internal combustion engines work. The maximum efficiency of a cyclic engine (the cycle means it can keep going) is given by the Stirling efficiency: Efficiency = (TH – TC) / TH, where TH is the absolute temperature of the heat source (the room, at 291.483 K) and TC is absolute temperature of the heat sink (the grave, at 282.317 K). The efficiency in this case is thus 3.14%. The total amount of useable energy, then, for a Stirling engine operating between the temperature of the room and the temperature of the grave and reducing the temperature of 75 L of air by 5 degrees is 0.8 J – much smaller than before, but still enough to lift a 100 g (3.5 oz) mass 81 cm (32") or to swing a door with a moment of inertia of 7 kg m^2 at an angular speed of 0.48 rad/s or 28 degrees per second.

That sounds more reasonable. Kinda. The real problem, of course is with the oddball mixture of spirits (which are by definition incorporeal) and physics (which only applies to the corporeal).

Oh, and the "practical upshot" would seem to be: If you are annoyed by a haunting, turn down the thermostat. If the ghost is using the Stirling Engine approach above, it would not be able to extract any useful energy if the temperature of your house is the same as the temperature of its grave.

What are we to make, then, of those ghost sightings in winter, frequently outside, where the temperature is less than that of the grave?